Alzheimer's disease

When couples stand together to speak their wedding vows, they’re very likely laser-focused on the present. But there is that promise: “’Til death do us part.”

If that marriage proceeds the way the couple hopes, they will be forced to confront the reality of those words.

NPR’s Diane Rehm reached that moment of truth on June 14, 2014. That is the day that her husband of 54 years began his withdrawal from life. John Rehm had battled Parkinson’s disease for nine long years, and he decided it was time to stop fighting.

An Alzheimer’s treatment developed by a Michigan State University researcher may be available in the next few years.

Muraleedharan Nair is a natural products chemist at MSU. He’s been working with Ashwagandha, a plant compound used in Eastern medicine. From that work, Nair has patented a botanical compound called withanamides.

Researchers at the University of Michigan are closely watching President Obama’s call for a big increase in federal funding for brain research.

President Obama is proposing a 100 million dollar increase in federal funding for brain research.

U of M has many different researchers studying the human brain. From Alzheimer’s disease to Depression, neuroscientists on the Ann Arbor campus are approaching the brain from a wide variety of specialties.

The National Institutes of Health has set a goal to prevent and treat Alzheimer's disease by 2050.

Henry Paulson is the director of the University of Michigan's Alzheimer's Disease Center.

"I'm a 100-percent supporter of this," he says. "This is a huge medical problem. We have over 5-million people who have Alzheimer's now in this country and as we get older, the number is increasing rapidly. So this is a crisis and although we understand a lot about the mechanisms of the disease, we still don't have effective therapies. So this push, this additional support I think will drive toward those therapies that we so desperately need."

16-million Americans are expected to have Alzheimer's disease or other forms of dementia by 2050.

The Obama Administration has allocated $50-million for Alzheimer's Research. N-I-H will spend an additional 30 million on two national studies.

"One of the things I like about the announcement yesterday is there are two major studies that they emphasize that are going to be funded right away," Paulson says. "One is a symptomatic study, that is the intranasal insulin, is looking to see if that can improve symptoms in people who have cognitive impairment. The other study is a preventative study from families who actually have inherited caused dimentia which is not what most people have."

Paulson says many investigators with the U of M's Alzheimer's Disease Center will be applying for additional funding for Alzheimer's research.